Katniss Everdeen is a petty criminal. She’s a poacher on government land, uses tools that have been outlawed, and operates comfortably in the black market.

Katniss Everdeen: criminal-hero.

She also happens to be one of the most ethical, courageous, smart, complex, and bi-cultural heroines of modern day literature. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is not the story of Katniss’ transition from criminal to hero. It’s the story of Katniss, criminal-hero. Katniss’ criminal behavior is a symptom of the staggering poverty forced upon her marginalized community by those with power. She acts in order to survive. Period. Her poverty is not due to being economically disadvantaged, culturally deprived, or underdeveloped, as if it were her own fault. No! These terms radically distort our awareness of reality.

She lives in frightening poverty precisely because of the policies of Panem, the capital in Collins fictional country, who has economically exploited and politically dispossessed her people. Through oppressive practices, violent threat, and “divide and conquer” policies, Katniss was left all alone. A story with eery similarities in the “real” world today.

Take for instance Uganda, which has one of the highest poverty rates in the world. A full 50% of Ugandans don’t have access to clean drinking water, with thousands of children forced to skip school in order to walk all day to and from wells to access (often unclean) water. In 2004 the average income per adult was $300, or 1/2 the regional average. They have the highest rate of alcohol abuse in the world and the highest birthrate. And the crime rate, as you have already guessed, is high. It’s a land filled with petty criminals. I can imagine in Uganda there’s been more than one occasion where a little boy has needed to share his bread with a starving classmate (as Peeta does with Katniss to stave off starvation).

But Uganda, as Katniss, is not ‘disadvantaged’, ‘deprived’, or ‘underdeveloped.’ Uganda’s poverty is of the same nature as in The Hunger Games:based on exploitation and opprression. As Martin Luther King Jr said, “Riots grow out of intolerable conditions. Violent revolts are generated by revolting conditions.” They are on the wrong end of colonialism, having been exploited and dispossessed for decades. What is colonialism? According to Joseph Conrad, colonialism in Africa is “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.” The Damascus Road Anti-Racism program defines colonialism as “a process of aggression against a people by a country which takes land, exploits resources, including the indigenous people of the land, destroys indigenous culture and then requires that the culture of the colonizer be accepted as the standard.” In other words, it’s a tool of oppression, a worldview that says we are “better-than” another.

You see this “better-than” attitude in shocking relief throughout The Hunger Games, and it’s what has left country after country in ruin today. In Collins book, you see it in the Surviver-like reality game that pits teenagers against each other in a fight to the death; all for the entertainment of citizens in Panem. In places like Uganda, it’s cloaked more creatively. Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University says, “The African decline doesn’t begin until the 70’s, well after a decade after independence. It coincides with a particular twist to the Cold War: increasing pressure from outside, the coming in of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, structure adjustment programs…”

These are programs I’m familiar with, and they all sound so official (and helpful!). Noam Chomsky takes off Panem’s cloak: “The World Bank gets countries to borrow up to their necks, usually Third World dictators, and then when they can’t pay, then the IMF comes in and says you have to pay with structural adjustment programs. And the poor people who suffer from structural adjustment, they didn’t borrow the money. They didn’t get anything out of it.” People forced to work and pay for something they didn’t do? Is this Hunger Games, or Uganda?

So who’s the real criminal in this story: Katniss, or Panem? Uganda, or colonial western powers? You must decide for yourself.

Actor Josh Hutcherson as Peeta, holding the burned bread he gives to Katniss

But what does seem clear is that Peeta’s bread, a gift ofcharity, is not enough. Individual response – no matter how well- intentioned, is not enough. In fact, it might even support the status quo. Brokenness on this scale requires more than charity; it requires justice. Note how ridiculously powerless more bread would be in “saving” the people in Districts 12 from the decades of oppression they’ve experienced! Appreciated in the arena? Sure. But powerless to effect change. The gospel demands more than remaining locked in poverty.

Which is why two recent films about Uganda by Christian aid groups have left me feeling empty. The viral #Kony2012 campaign boils all of Uganda’s trouble down to Joseph Kony and his ubduction of child soldiers. A terrible story! But their campaign completely removes it from wider colonial context. And equally removes Uganda itself from being part of the solution (Which I was glad to see The Hunger Games avoids). An individual solution to a social-systemic diagnosis just doesn’t add up; like putting a bandaid on cancer.

Likewise, Uganda Man, a great little video telling the story of Christians digging wells in Uganda, does little if anything to properly diagnose the root causes of Uganda’s poverty. Leaving viewers to assume these ‘deprived’ and ‘underdeveloped’ people might be saved through charity without ever addressing the systemic causes of poverty.

Want to learn more about Colonialism and the sources of poverty in our world? For starters, I can’t recommend The Hunger Games trilogy more highly to you! It’s amazing for 87 reasons. Here’s an eye-popping trailer for a movie based on the first book, in theatre’s March 23.

Or, if you prefer to explore colonialism in its non-fiction form, check out this youtube video called “Colonialism in 10 Minutes: The Scramble for Africa”; it’s a clip from the film Uganda Rising.

13 Responses

Everything is through God’s grace. Even the bad stuff. Evil exists so that good can come from it.

Forrest fires serve a purpose. God does not promise us no storms. He only promises to take us through the storm.

Many people see God as being “asleep” in their lives during their storms. They fail to understand how God works in their lives. God is easy to please but hard to satisfy. He will continue to bring lessons back to us until we have learned what He wanted us to learn.

We are called to worship in spirit and truth. By dying to self we can see objective truth. It seems to me that you place more emphasis on love than truth. If I am right, God will continue to bring you lessons on this. Only you will be able to know if I am right or wrong.

Marty, as usual, your post has me thinking about the sources you quoted. Dr. Chomsky, despite fame in linguistics and cognitive psychology, now spends far more time in political activism that leans far more toward idealism than pragmatic solutions. Sadly, this idealism has led Chomsky to downplay the brutality of Marxist-Communist brutality in Cambodia, North Vietnam, and the Soviet Union – *not* a very credible stance nowadays. His political essays often reference himself instead of a representative spectrum of the field. As said earlier, I agree with viewing the WB and IMF with a jaundiced eye, but for fiscal and pragmatic reasons rather than Chomsky’s assertion of demons of Western imperialism behind every international endeavor. For Chomsky to be credible on Uganda, he needs to support his assertions with data-based analysis rather than superficial plausibility.
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Mahmood Mamdani, in contrast, presents some ideas worth thinking about regardless of one’s agreement or disagreement with his views on Uganda. He rightly criticizes oversimplification in human rights initiatives (cited in http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/03/22/politics_and_humanitarianism/), and in media reporting. Mamdani, broadly interpreted, also questions whether “humanitarianism” has become pretext for interventionist policy, or even part of the language of power rather than the language of the poor and their advocates. I am sympathetic to these broad ideas as I believe that oversimplification, misportrayal in media, and pretext (as opposed to rational argument) have predominantly negative effects in U.S. domestic policy. However, I do take issue with Mamdani’s assertion quoted in your post on Uganda, Marty. There is no significant “lag” between independence and decline in Uganda, as Mr. Obote’s party held sufficient votes to centralize power by rewriting their Constitution within five years of independence. There was already unrest within Uganda before Idi Amin’s rise to dictatorship, as minority political groups were outvoted and unheard. Moreover, rising drought in sub-Saharan Africa, including northern Uganda, also began to be felt at this time, aggravating unrest. I find it difficult to believe Dr. Mamdani’s assertion of global forces as responsible for Uganda’s plight in the 1970s, when constitutional failure, internal unrest, adverse weather, and one of the most brutal dictatorships in African history would be quite sufficient explanation. What are your thoughts?

With great respect, Rev. Troyer, I was deeply disturbed by the citing of Noam Chomsky. While, as a general principal, I try to honor truth no matter what the source, I believe it unwise to drink from a poisoned well. Thank you for your commitment to serving God.

You are right about the World Bank and their oppressive tactics at saddling developing countries with debt. The WB is Socialism gone amock: it was formed to help re-develop countries after WWII. When Robert McNamara was appointed to head the bank by Lyndon Johnson, there was an emphasis away from infrastructure projects and into “social services”, which could not be effectively underwritten with traditional capital risk analysis. If you loan a country money to produce a power plant, you can determine the progress by routine inspections. How can you track whether a government run program to produce literacy is effective, especially in a third-world country? Hence the “open-spigot” of loan money to government dictators and technocrats.

As a result, the WB has evolved into a neo-liberal version of socialist imperialism, with Western nations and NGOs dictating structural reforms that are derived from a central planning perspective and often contrary to the social structure of the country recieving the loans. The solution for Uganda must come from Ugandans, despite what we think about their customs (i.e. cultural views on homosexuality). Pressure for them to conform to liberal ideas that are held in Wester Europe and the USA are just another form of slave-holder mentality.

The real solution for developing countries is to let them come up with solutions that work for them and keep our noses out of it. Uganda is a country that is rich in natural resources and some tough-love will kick start them into a productive capitalistic economy. As long as they are on the WB/IMF teat, they will never take the intiative to stand on their own two legs. It may not be the utopian version that we want to see; abortion may be outlawed, homosexuality may be vilified, “human rights” may be curtailed (according to Western standards). However, it is arrogant of us to impose our values on them, whether through crippling loan programs or pressure from NGOs. Otherwise, they have just traded one imperial power (Britain) for another (WB/IMF).

Could starchamber be an Obama czar?
Which one of them said, “Humans cover the earth like maggots…”??
But of course, starchamber can reproduce at will because starchamber is special.
Elite and entitled and intellectual.
The rest of us should be sterilized.

To Marty Troyer, thank you for drawing attention to the plight of Uganda and its people. I agree that it’s wise to view interventions by the World Bank and IMF critically: sometimes they help and sometimes not. That said, does your hypothesis of “colonialism” as an ongoing driver of poverty in Uganda have merit? Historically, Uganda’s borders formed around WWI under British rule, and the nation became independent in 1962, with Mr. Obote elected freely the same year. Obote’s party held a sufficient majority to amend the Ugandan Constitution in 1967, declaring Obote as a continuing president without re-election. A military coup in 1971 installed Idi Amin as dictator; he was responsible for 300,000 deaths (about 1-2% of the population) and many more mutilations, *and* he forcibly removed most of the South Asian entrepreneurs from Uganda. The latter action devastated the economy, as it would in any nation that oppresses entrepreneurs [including our own?]. Ugandan exiles together with Tanzanian troops overthrew Idi Amin in 1979 – an event I remember reading with some satisfaction as Amin’s brutality was profound. However, Mr. Obote was reinstalled as the leader until he was deposed in 1986 by the National Resistance Army led by Mr. Yoweri Museveni, who remains in charge to this day (26 years!). Museveni’s party did succeed in programs to reduce AIDS/HIV prevalence, institute market reforms, and begin free secondary education in Uganda. However, his reign has been marked by government corruption, civil war (the LRA of Joseph Kony, for example), foreign wars (two invasions of the former Zaire (Congo), support for the Tutsi in the Rwandan massacre of 1994, support for the 2nd Sudanese Civil War, and further conflict with Rwanda), with the expected impoverishment, internal displacement of large numbers of the Ugandan population, and increased food & fuel costs driving inflation. A look at Uganda’s past and present would decidedly identify government corruption, internal displacement by civil war, disastrous economic decisions *by Uganda’s own rulers,* and costs of foreign wars as major drivers of poverty. Given this history, blaming “colonialism,” the IMF, WB, or similar entities as major drivers of poverty appears ludicrous. Since a few years after its independence, Uganda has not had good governance, and blaming foreign sources for its leaders’ disastrously poor decisions seems to be a cynical way to evade responsibility. Marty, perhaps you should research more on Uganda, then re-evaluate your post. It is a country that has been crippled by great horrors and poor decisions, and its people deserve better – beginning with assigning responsibility where responsibility lies.

Marty, I loved this. I’m so thankful for people like you & Ellen who were moved by The Hunger Games like I was but are far more elequent to say what we’re thinking. I noticed in paragraph 2 you said Panem was the capital, when you meant the Capital. Or did I misread this? I very much look forward to more of your articles.

If you really want to help Uganda,and Africa, give them sterilization programs to control over population. That should also work in the U.S. if we truly want to do away with poverty.
Of course, if the reports of A.I.D.S decimating the whole of the African continent is to believed then sterilization won’t be needed in Africa.
If Communism could gain a foothold in Africa then all the problems would be solved. Castro tried but all his troops achieved was bringing back H.I.V..
….
“In any country there must be people who have to die. They are the sacrifices any nation has to make to achieve law and order.”
Idi Amin

Starchamber,
My spirit shouts “No!” to you in deep disaproval of your tact, comment, and tone.
You suggest 3 solutions to the poverty of Africa: all of which are void of humanity. I can only imagine that what allows you to spew hate and effectionately quote Idi Amin in such a way is due to the anonymity afforded in the blogosphere.

Why ‘approve’ such comments? You’ve unmasked for me and my readers what we’re up against as people of true faith who are seeking solutions to the world’s crucial issues. In treating Africa’s people with such cold disdain, you’ve illustrated nicely how to ensure the status quo is never changed.